Damon Locks’s Chicago

by Sophia Carmen Salganicoff

For Damon Locks (BFA 1989), Chicago is a city of reverberations. “Walking these same streets that Curtis Mayfield or Mahalia Jackson walked is pretty amazing,” he said. That sense of lineage—both sonic and social—runs through his work as a visual artist, musician, and educator.

Locks’ 2025 album List of Demands merges layered vocals, syncopated beats, and sampled textures to explore memory, resistance, and community. His visual work employs collage, drawing, and printmaking to center themes of collective care, Black liberation, and urban life. Across mediums, he works with repetition, fragmentation, and reassembly as strategies of cultural preservation and social commentary.

Originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, Locks moved to Chicago in 1988 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and has made the city his home ever since. He is a longtime lecturer in SAIC’s Art and Technology / Sound Practices department, and for over a decade, he taught art at Stateville Correctional Center through the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. His work is rooted in memory and a city that gives artists room to experiment and evolve—where ideas can stretch, simmer, and collide without needing to arrive fully formed. “Chicago has always been a collaborative city,” he said. “Artists here aren’t necessarily protective or secretive about their resources.” Whether he’s collaging sound or image or teaching across institutions, Locks is always listening—and always building. This is his Chicago.

The Brewed Coffee and Bric-a-Brac Records
Logan Square

The Brewed is one of my regular haunts. Every kind of person that comes here is the best—weirdos from every spectrum and time. Some not weirdos. It hits the sweet spot in terms of curiosity. It’s great to take an interview here, go for a walk, have a smile and a conversation. And if I need a record, I can have Nick, Jen, or Ash order it for me. Bric-a-Brac next door is full of cool objects, VHS tapes, and old toys. It’s not just nostalgic—it’s about remixing the past into something new.

South Side Community Art Center
Bronzeville

There’s all this history here. In the main room, there's the Nat King Cole piano. Downstairs, there used to be a Gordon Parks darkroom. They’ll have these Barbara Jones-Hogu prints in their collection on display. You may not be able to simply see Nat King Cole’s piano in other cities.

Margaret Burroughs (BA 1942, MA 1948, HON 1987) co-founded the DuSable Museum as well as the South Side Community Art Center. She also taught in the prison I ended up teaching in. There are people I taught who used to take classes with her. That’s a serious kind of lineage.

Djenne Collection
Beverly

Djenne is just packed floor to ceiling with fabric and clothes. You wander through it like a forest of amazing fabrics. I got interested in African textiles a while ago, and I started going there a lot. I have a friend who’s a local clothing designer, Jamie Hayes/Production Mode, so I can often just buy the fabric and have them hand make me something, but they can also make you something in the shop with their designers. It’s a world of possibility when it comes to fashion. 

Chicago Comics
Lakeview

I grew up reading comics, which I unfortunately sold when I was in high school. But I’ve stayed connected. I’ve been going to Chicago Comics for so long that I’ve seen a lot of turnover with the people who work there, but they always have a great group with a wide range of interests.

I grew up a Marvel Comics kid but these days I am more interested in cool, independent work—like the comics of Chris Ware (BFA 2008, MFA 2010) or Emil Ferris (BFA 2008, MFA 2010). You go in, sure, you’re looking at comics, but you’re really there for the cast of characters. It’s always had that Cheers feel. ■